We Don't See Eye to Eye with the ISI Posted by Eric Martin

Matt Yglesias makes an interesting observation regarding the perverse incentives that our involvement in the Afghanistan/Pakistan region over the past near-decade has given the Pakistani military/ISI: 

Whenever I read reports about US government officials being frustrated by Pakistan’s cooperation in fighting militant groups, I always wonder what it is policymakers are expecting will happen. Our current policy, after all, is to give the Pakistani military a lot of aid that’s predicated on the existence of an Islamist militant threat. If the threat went away, the aid would probably dry up and even if it didn’t dry up it would be redirected away from military matters—we wouldn’t be interested in explicitly funding an arms race with India.

But the incentives are even further skewed.  As is well known, important factions of Pakistan's strategic class view the militant groups that we find problematic as useful proxies vis-a-vis India in places like Kashmir, as well as in terms of creating strategic depth in Afghanistan (which, again, is seen as necessary to counter the superior territorial/population size of rival India).

Thus, not only are we creating a dynamic by which the Pakistani military/strategic class will only continue to receive massive infusions of aid for as long as militant groups remain prevalent and active in the region, but according to their (admittedly short-sighted) calculus, those militant groups are of strategic, long term value in terms of countering India. 

Given the Karzai government's warm relations with India, were the Pakistani military/ISI to truly clamp down on the Afghan Taliban and other militant groups given sanctuary within its borders, the net result would be a reduction in valuable US aid, as well as a strategic gain for India in Afghanistan (a nation that, prior to the US invasion, Pakistan enjoyed great influence through the Taliban government).

Thus, there is little reason to expect Pakistan to cooperate with us in terms of eradicating those militant groups regardless of our entreaties and their assurance.  In fact, as Max Fisher notes, the situation is getting worse: with Pakistan growing increasingly unsupportive of our mission - possibly willing to sacrifice US military aid in order to hasten our exit from the region.

After 9 years of Pakistani double-speak and inaction evincing this intransigence, the Obama administration should drop the charade, confront the reality of the situation, and adjust its strategy accordingly.  Pakistan is not going to support our mission when the end result will weaken Pakistan relative to India.  However, escalating a conflict with Pakistan in order to punish that state, or compel its cooperation, would be disastrous given the state of our already over-stretched and over-extended military. 

It is time to accelerate outreach to the Taliban, and search, in earnest, for a negotiated framework that would allow for prompt de-escalation.

Egyptian Democracy Doesn’t Need Gamal Mubarak Posted by The Editors

This guest post is by Stephen McInerney, Director of Advocacy at the Project on Middle East Democracy.

In a recent article for the Foreign Policy Middle East Channel, Tarek Masoud makes the provocative claim that a rigged succession from President Hosni Mubarak to his son Gamal may in fact be “the best hope for Egyptian democracy.”  Masoud makes some compelling points, but his overall argument overreaches.  The “best hope for Egyptian democracy” lies not with the president’s son, but with opposition demands for political reforms that empower the Egyptian people.

First, Masoud distorts the position of those opposing an inherited succession from father to son, declaring that “Egypt's opposition forces and Western advocates of democracy promotion all seem to agree on one thing: Gamal Mubarak should not be allowed to succeed his father Hosni Mubarak as President of Egypt.”  To be clear, no one has argued that Gamal should “not be allowed” to succeed his father as president – on the contrary, the Egyptian opposition would welcome an open process in which Gamal were to run against other candidates in a free election. 

Secondly, Masoud suggests that a Gamal Mubarak presidency would set the stage for a rising opposition to challenge him in the future.  This recalls hopes that surfaced ten years ago in Syria, that the younger, Western-educated Bashar al-Assad would be a weak ruler more susceptible than his father to pressure from Syria’s opposition.  A lesson from the younger Assad’s presidency and from similar father-to-son transitions in Jordan and Morocco is that these perceived openings often prove elusive. 

Masoud counters that if Gamal Mubarak were to come to power in 2011 through an (albeit rigged) “contested” election [the quotes are his], his fate would be bound to uncertain elections in the years ahead.  However, regularly contested - but rigged - elections have failed to weaken the grip of Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen or Abdelaziz Bouteflika in Algeria.  Gamal’s lack of legitimacy and more tenuous hold on power could just as likely lead him to use the Egyptian security apparatus to consolidate his control even more aggressively than his father. 

Blogging the Woodward Book Posted by Michael Cohen

So I've finally started to slog through the new Bob Woodward book and this passage in particular really jumped out at me. It comes from an interview between Woodward and National Security Advisor Jim Jones and it is his take on why the war in Afghanistan matters:

"If we're not successful here," Jones said, "you'll have a staging base for global terrorism all over the world. People will say the terrorists won. And you'll see expressions of these kinds of things in Africa, South America, you name it. Any developing country is going to say, this is the way we beat [the United States], and we're going to have a bigger problem." 

A setback or loss for the United States would be a "tremendous boost for jihadist extremists, fundamentalists all over the world." 

"It's certainly a clash of civilizations. It's a clash of religions. It's a clash of almost concepts of how to live." The conflict is that deep, he said "So I think if you don't succeed in Afghanistan, you will be fighting in more places."

"Second, if we don't succeed here, organizations like NATO, by association the EU, and the UN might be relegated to the dustbin of history."

How did a President who ran as a candidate on the message that he would "change the mindset" of American foreign policy end up with a national security advisor completely mired in conventional, unnuanced, Cheney-esque thinking about American power? And keep in mind this is one of the people in the Administration who was opposed to the Afghan surge.

You know a few months ago, Spencer and I got in an interesting back-and-forth after I complained that this Administration has a real dearth of strategic thinkers.

After reading this passage . . . well . . . I win.

 

More Magical Military Thinking on Afghanistan Posted by Michael Cohen

Finally, it seems we have some potential good news coming out of Afghanistan:

Taliban representatives and the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai have begun secret, high-level talks over a negotiated end to the war, according to Afghan and Arab sources.

While emphasizing the preliminary nature of the current discussions, the sources said that for the first time they believe that Taliban representatives are fully authorized to speak for the Quetta Shura, the Afghan Taliban organization based in Pakistan, and its leader, Mohammad Omar.

"They are very, very serious about finding a way out," one source close to the talks said of the Taliban.

It's impossible to know what to make of this and whether it represents a serious initiative toward reconciliation, but if there is even a kernel of truth in this story - clearly this is a positive development. If the Taliban leadership is in fact interested in some sort of political reconciliation - and not waiting out the US presence - this has to be considered good news for Afghanistan and obviously good news for the United States.

All of which raises the question - what the hell is wrong with the Pentagon:

This is not the right time for reconciliation efforts with the Taliban, Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell told reporters. More progress was needed with regard to security on the ground, he said."The secretary of defence believes we still need to make more progress with regards to security on the ground. We need to take the fight more aggressively and for a greater duration to the Taliban…," Morrell added.

Excuse me while I repeatedly bang my head against a wall - why, why, why would the Pentagon take this position? If there are indications that the Taliban leadership and the Karzai government are interested in political negotiations - even embryonically - I'm at a complete loss in understanding why any person in the US government would want to throw cold water on it.

If both sides in the conflict believe the time has come for reconciliation . . . isn't that something that we should be encouraging even if just for our own narrow self-interest? And why would the Pentagon believe that more military pressure will necessarily lead to a better political outcome. There is obviously the possibility that it would strengthen Taliban hardliners and paradoxically by weakening the Taliban it might make them less inclined to make a deal in the near-term. The possibility that we've reached some sort of military and political stalemate in which both sides see more reason to talk than to fight (thus making a deal possible) seems to be too difficult a concept for some people at the Pentagon to master.

What's worse, Morrell's words publicly undercut what the Washington Post says is Obama's desire to see the US think more clearly about a political resolution might look like:

U.S. officials depicted a somewhat different progression leading to the same conclusion, insisting that the time for real negotiations has only now arrived. 

"Now, yeah, there's a sense that we mean what we say" when voicing support for a political process, the official said. "The president's view is that we have to do these things at the same time. We can't take the approach that we're just going to be putting our foot on the gas on the military side of things and will get around to the political," he said.

Last month, Obama pressed his national security team to be more specific about what it meant by a political solution, and "reinforced" the need to be working simultaneously on the military and political sides of the equation, the official said.

It's very difficult to see how Morrell's words don't run counter to this and they seem to suggest that the Pentagon believes that the military's foot should remain on the gas - contrary to the president's wishes.

In the end, the Taliban insurgency has reached a point of where it almost certainly cannot be defeated via a military solution. The best hope is a political settlement. If there is any actual momentum toward reaching that goal then the US should clearly be doing everything in its power to encourage such an outcome and certainly not place its judgment above that of the Afghans themselves.

Perhaps this is something that the President could explain to the folks at the Pentagon. 

The Long Road to Iraqi Government Formation Posted by Michael Wahid Hanna

In an article I wrote for Foreign Policy last Friday, I discussed the announcement that the main Shiite parties had selected sitting Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki as their nominee to form the next government of Iraq. (I also did an interview today for NPR’s Morning Edition on the same topic):

It was always unlikely that ‘Ayad ‘Allawi would be Iraq's next Prime Minister. This now has been definitively confirmed and, ironically, on a day when Iraq's government formation process became the world's longest exercise in political stalemate. With the announcement of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's selection as the post-electoral Shiite alliance's nominee to be Prime Minister, the action now will shift to divvying up posts in what almost certainly will be a broad-based national unity government. This in itself is no easy task, but at least this announcement gives the process clear direction and will provide a framework for the negotiations to come.

Despite his electoral slate's surprisingly strong showing in last March's parliamentary elections, ‘Allawi's immediate political future was inherently limited due to the sectarian dynamics that continue to shape political discourse in post-Saddam Hussein Iraqi politics. It is certainly true that the ‘Iraqiyya list garnered a respectable nationwide level of cross-sectarian support. However, the dominant political factions in today's Iraq represent points within a spectrum of Shiite Islamist consensus. Unsurprisingly, after years of disenfranchisement and repression, this segment of the political class is hugely defensive of its entitlement to rule the country. The political courtship of ‘Allawi by various figures from the Shiite establishment was more about negotiating leverage within the intra-Shiite contest for power than about real cross-sectarian outreach.

Al-Maliki arrived at this point due to the unlikely support of his most bitter political enemies from within the Shiite camp, the Sadrists. The announcement was preceded by some chaos within the Shiite ranks as some major parties boycotted the decision and maintained their implacable opposition to al-Maliki’s retention of power even after the announcement.

Neocons Fudge Numbers, Lose Party on Defense Budget Posted by Jacob Stokes

It’s pretty tough to keep track of all the attempted sleights of hand being slung around the Beltway by establishment republicans about the defense budget right now, but one thing’s for sure: it’s a desperate attempt to enforce party dogma on an increasingly fissured movement.

First, the numbers sleight of hand. It’s one of those lies, damn lies and statistics-type things. In Monday’s op-ed by conservative poobahs Kristol, Feulner and Brooks, they revert to a number of conservative hobbyhorses, the most ridiculous of which is the idea that defense spending should be evaluated as a percentage of GDP rather than as a response to threats. Is there some magic ratio of GDP to defense spending that magically makes us “safe”? If so, what is it? And would they have made the same argument during the Cold War, even when the threat level is different? 

Kristol et al use the ridiculous defense spending-to-GDP standard to claim that we’re not spending enough on defense. But as Larry Korb and Laura Conley of CAP point out: 

Total defense spending in real terms is now higher than at any time since the end of World War II, more than throughout the entire Cold War, and even 10 percent higher than the peak of the Reagan defense buildup. The baseline defense budget has been growing in real terms for 13 straight years—the longest-ever period of sustained real growth in U.S. defense spending.

As a result, the portion of the world’s military expenditures the United States consumes compared to our potential adversaries has grown from 60 percent to 250 percent. This means that even if the United States were to cut its spending in half it would still be spending more than its current and potential adversaries. We are far beyond the point of diminishing returns in U.S. defense spending relative to our actual defense requirements.

So we’re spending more despite the reduced threat landscape that comes from having dumped the Soviet Union onto the ash heap of history? Kristol et al try to say we still face a similarly dangerous world: “…faced with a nuclear Iran, or a Chinese People's Liberation Army that can deny access to U.S. ships or aircraft in the Asian-Pacific region, there are many missions ahead.” Dan Drezner quickly cuts this down to size:

Our Ongoing Civil-Military Crisis - The Milburn Edition Posted by Michael Cohen

Over the past year or so I've been writing quite a bit here at Democracy Arsenal about the civil-military crisis in this country today. This is all a bit ironic and misplaced because I am about the furthest thing in the world from being any kind of expert on civil-military relations.

But it has become more and more difficult to ignore the evidence that our military is populated by an increasingly politicized officer corps that believes its national security judgment is on somehow equal par with that of the civilian leadership. What's worse these individuals seem willing to use allies in Congress and the news media to pressure their civilian masters to support and endorse their views on defining the national interest and even the proper use of American military force. The kerfuffle this past summer over General Stanely McChrystal's comments to a Rolling Stone reporter seemed to crystallize the problem.

Compounding the challenge is a civilian leadership that has often been complicit in this crisis: granting the military far too much power, prestige and influence in the realm of foreign policy and national security. We saw this at the tail end of the Iraq War when President Bush publicly invested General David Petraeus with unprecedented influence over decision-making regarding conduct of the war; it occurred repeatedly during the Afghan review last fall; and President Obama has aided and abetted it by consistently appointing military officers to diplomatic and policy positions traditionally held by civilians. Increasingly, the once sharp lines between civilian and military leaders are becoming dangerously blurred. 

But nothing I've seen or read about the civil-military crisis in this country quite prepared me for this most recent essay in Joint Forces Quarterly titled Breaking Ranks: Dissent and the Military Professional, by one Lieutenant Colonel, Andrew Milburn USMC. Here is a taste of what Milburn has to say:

1. The military officer belongs to a profession upon whose members are conferred great responsibility, a code of ethics, and an oath of office. These grant him moral autonomy and obligate him to disobey an order he deems immoral; that is, an order that is likely to harm the institution writ large—the Nation, military, and subordinates—in a manner not clearly outweighed by its likely benefits.

2. This obligation is not confined to effects purely military against those related to policy: the complex nature of contemporary operations no longer permits a clear distinction between the two. Indeed, the military professional's obligation to disobey is an important check and balance in the execution of policy.

3. In deciding how to dissent, the military officer must understand that this dilemma demands either acceptance of responsibility or wholehearted disobedience.

Perhaps even more disturbing than these arguments is Milburn's assertion that he is not alone. He reports on a survey of 20 senior field-grade officers who offered similar opinions:

"Without exception, they agreed that there are circumstances under which they would disobey a lawful order. Their criteria" include:

• "If the officer cannot live with obeying the order, then he must disobey and accept the consequences."
• "When I cannot look at myself in the mirror afterwards."
• "When I deem the order to be immoral."
• "When it is going to lead to mission failure."
• "When it will get someone injured or killed needlessly."
• "When it will cause military or institutional disaster."

This is for lack of a better word, appalling. And it suggests that the crisis in civil-military relations is far more severe than most Americans realize. As Richard Kohn, an actual expert on civil-military relations, argued at Tom Ricks blog Milburn's article is nothing less than an "attack on military professionalism that would unhinge the armed forces of the United States." I would even go a step further: it is a direct assault on the most basic constitutional protections against a military coup d'etat in this country. And no I don't believe that this is hyperbole.

For example, Milburn argues that "Just as civilian leaders have an obligation to challenge military leaders if the latter appear to be pursuing a strategy that undermines policy, military leaders are committed to challenge their civilian masters if the policy appears to be unconstitutional, immoral, or otherwise detrimental to the institution."

This is exactly wrong. Civilian leaders don't have an obligation to challenge military leaders; they have a responsibility and duty to lead them - and to give them direct orders in support of what they believe are the national interest. The notion, implicit in Milburn's argument that the executive branch and the military are somehow equal branches of government is dangerously misguided.

As for the second part of Milburn's argument; civilian leaders embody the Constitution and the act of disobeying an order given by any civilian leader . . . is in itself an unconstitutional act. Military officers are not granted the right to make their own decisions about what is or is not unconstitutional or what represents an immoral act.

As Kohn points out, military officers possess no actual moral autonomy. If an officer believes that an order is immoral then I suppose they can choose not to carry it out and face court martial or perhaps they could resign their commission. Obviously, if an order is illegal and violates national or international law than a soldier not only has a right to disobey, they have a responsibility to do so. But they certainly don't have any actual right to disobey it based on their own personal moral views. What Milburn is suggesting is anarchy - and that would be true of any military that allowed its soliders to act with such personal initiative.

I would recommend reading Richard Kohn's extremely important takedown of the Milburn piece and also Paul Yingling's smart entry at Small Wars Journal. But also take a few moments to read the Milburn article, if anything just to get a clearer sense of how severe our civil-military crisis actually is and the genuine threats to the civilian control of the military that not long ago would have seemed unimaginable.

Magical Military Thinking About Afghanistan - The Iraq Version Posted by Michael Cohen

I'm a bit late to this one, but Kimberly Dozier's interview with General David Petraeus from a few days ago is incredibly eye-opening . . . and depressing:

When pressed about the dour headlines of diving public opinion polls back home, he turns to his computer and digs out the latest statistics on violence in Iraq -- only six incidents thus far that day, compared to roughly "220 a day back in 2007," which is proof, he says, that his counterinsurgency strategy worked once and will again.

There is something oddly pathetic about this. It's sort of like an over-the-hill boxer showing someone a video of his title fight from when he was a younger man: "look how good I was back then . . . I can do it again."

I don't think it can be properly overstated how incredibly destructive the "surge narrative" has been on American foreign policy - but this is yet another excellent example. We have convinced ourselves that US arms turned around the situation there (not really true) . . . and thus the model can be replicated in Afghanistan.  And it is precisely this sort of magical thinking about Iraq's success that is directly informing our military strategy in Afghanistan. "It worked in Iraq; it can work here."

It seems almost incomprehensible that smart military leaders would make such direct comparison between political environments and military situations that are so extraordinarily different - but yet here we are. Seemingly, the tragedy of Iraq is the gift that keeps on giving.

By the way, did you hear that Iraq today broke a world record: it's now "the country that has gone the longest between holding parliamentary elections and forming a government, experts." If only we can repeat that success in Afghanistan.

China Currency Bill: The Upside Posted by Jacob Stokes

Yesterday, the House passed a bill that allows the U.S. to seek trade sanctions against China and other nations for manipulating their currency to gain trade advantages. The bill aims at punishing China for keeping its currency an estimated 40 percent lower than it should be, which the Economic Policy Institute estimates has cost the U.S. 1.8 million jobs since 2001.

Of course, there’s some amount of political motivation that goes into this decision, as candidates turn to lambasting China on the campaign trail. And there are certainly things that can be done at home that would help the situation, as Matt Yglesias points out.

But I think the measure has a few redeeming qualities. First, while the bill is unlikely to pass, it will give some ammunition to the Obama administration when it goes to China and tries to play good cop (administration), bad cop (Congress) with the Chinese, giving credibility to threats about actions America is prepared to take on the issue. This is important because a central characteristic of the Chinese regime is that they’re much more concerned about force and coercion than they are about being the sparkle in the eye of the international community.

Secondly, as America begins to push back on the issue, the Chinese government can use that pressure as a convenient excuse to push back against their own influential export lobby, which is the biggest proponent of keeping the value of the yuan low. Chinese leaders know they need to expand the domestic market and help the Chinese consumer buy more; increasing the value of the yuan will do that. What’s more, the amount of currency intervention needed to keep the yuan low creates all sorts of negative sides effects, an overheating economy being only one of them, that the Chinese government would like to get rid of.

Our Ongoing Civil-Military Relations Crisis Posted by Michael Cohen

Today's gobsmacking quote from the new Woodward book.

"Mr. President," Tien said, "I don't see how you can defy your military chain here. We kind of are where we are. Because if you tell General [Stanley A.] McChrystal [the U.S. commander in Afghanistan], 'I got your assessment, got your resource constructs, but I've chosen to do something else,' you're going to probably have to replace him. You can't tell him, 'Just do it my way, thanks for your hard work.' And then where does that stop?"

The colonel did not have to elaborate. His implication was that not only McChrystal but the entire military high command might go in an unprecedented toppling - Gates; Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Gen. David H. Petraeus, then head of U.S. Central Command. Perhaps no president could weather that, especially a 48-year-old with four years in the U.S. Senate and 10 months as commander in chief.

Excuse me while I count all the ways in which Colonel Tien's statement is reflective of the ongoing civ-mil crisis in this country.

A) "Mr. President," Tien said, "I don't see how you can defy your military chain here." 

Hmm. The very idea that the President of the United States could ever be in a situation where he "defies" the military chain of command on a decision related to national security decision-making pretty much turns the 230-year tradition of civilian control of the military on its head. What I have trouble seeing here is how Col. Tien could possibly say this to the President of the United States.

B) "Because if you tell General [Stanley A.] McChrystal [the U.S. commander in Afghanistan], 'I got your assessment, got your resource constructs, but I've chosen to do something else,' you're going to probably have to replace him. You can't tell him, 'Just do it my way, thanks for your hard work.'" 

Magical Military Thinking About Afghanistan - The Stavridis Version Posted by Michael Cohen

Someday when the history of the US war in Afghanistan is written historians will point to this op-ed by James Stavridis NATO Supreme Allied Commander for Europe as Exhibit A in the magical military thinking that doomed the US effort there. I'm not sure my prodigious amounts of snark can do justice to how ridiculous this article is . .  but let's give it a whirl.

Stavridis basic argument is that the recent op-ed in the New York Times by Carnegie Endowment scholar Gilles Dorronsorro (who has been consistently right about the increasingly dire situation in Afghanistan) is actually wrong about how badly things are going there. You see according to Stavridis . . . things are going just peachy!

And what is Stavridis's evidence:

There is significant progress in this area as we have fielded 240,000 Afghan National Security Forces. The recruiting and training continues on a path to reach 300,000 by next summer, while operational competence continues to grow.

Really? Here's what General Caldwell, who is actually responsible for training these same Afghan forces, had to say about their status:

General Caldwell said it would not be until October 2011 — three months after the deadline for the start of American withdrawals set by Mr. Obama — that he will have finished building the Afghan security forces to their full capacity. For now, he said, “they cannot operate independently."

Indeed, Stavridis thinks its awesome that the "Afghan National Military Academy is a four year degree-producing institution" and "the Afghan National Army has opened schools in intelligence, engineering, law, military police, logistics, religious and cultural affairs and finance."

Personally I'm surprised he didn't mention the fact that the attrition rate in the ANSF is 47% - after all this is an improvement from its peak of 70%. Or he could have mentioned today's WSJ report that indicates the NATO has trained 100,000 Afghan soliders over the past 10 months but expects to lose 83,000 over the next thirteen months due to desertion, death and low retention rates. That's a net of 17,000 soldiers!

More on America's Ongoing Civ-Mil Relations Crisis Posted by Michael Cohen

Over at abumuqawama, Andrew Exum thinks some of us are making far too much out of the current crisis in civ-mil relations. He quotes a reader:

How many of the people who think we have a serious civil-military problem because the military is controlling Obama (or whatever word one wants to use) also a) complained when Shinseki spoke out about the Iraq war strategy, b) thought Rumsfeld was correct in general to ride roughshod over the generals in 2001-2003, and c) thought that the generals complaining about Bush's Iraq strategy should have piped down and been quiet?

Andrew believes these are "good questions" and claims "it's worth noting how partisan preferences shape when and how people choose to get their panties all up in a twist on this." In particular he accuses Andrew Sullivan of engaging in a double standard for supporting retired generals who spoke out against torture while at the same time attacking David Petraeus. 

Forgive me for saying . . . but please! None of these events are even comparable to what Wooward recounts in "Obama's Wars" of the Pentagon basically doing everything possible to force Obama to support a 30,000 troop escalation (even misleading POTUS about war games that played out a smaller footprint scenario and publicly lobbying for more troops in congressional testimony and in the news media). You can read more here about the duplicitous games and public lobbying perpetrated by the Pentagon during last year's Afghanistan review. I dare someone to read this article and conclude that we DON'T have a serious civ-mil crisis in this country.

As for the particulars, the Shinseki comparison is particularly bogus. As I wrote here last year: "In 2003, he was Army Chief of Staff and when he publicly contradicted the Bush Administration's rosy view of the post-war occupation of Iraq he wasn't being interviewed on television - he was testifying under oath to Congress. As Shinseki's spokesperson correctly pointed out at the time, 'He was asked a question and he responded with his best military judgment.'"

Should We Let Rising Powers into Our Club? Posted by David Shorr

 
Sometimes when you run across an opposing viewpoint, it can really spur you to sharpen your own argument. Such was the case when I read former Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castañeda's "Not Ready for Prime Time" article on rising powers in Foreign Affairs (published in shorter, paywall-less form in the Los Angeles Times). Castañeda has a pretty low opinion of the rising powers as pillars of the rules-based global order and recommends they be kept on a diplomatic wait-list before being admitted to the inner sanctum.

The good people at The Globalist published my rejoinder earlier this week. Here's an excerpt:

Mr. Castañeda’s idea of a political purgatory for the rising powers is unworkable and based on a misreading of today’s world. Pulling the new powers into closer consultation is much more likely to boost their adherence to multilateral norms than imperiously declaring them unready. Russia’s newfound zeal for pressuring Iran, largely attributable to the recent reset of U.S.-Russian relations, is a case in point.

As they say, read the whole thing.

Values Meal Posted by David Shorr

As the United States works to regain other nations' trust, it has to convincingly draw connections between American aims and the international common good and combat perceptions of completely self-serving policies. Key to this framework is the notion that the ideals of liberty are indeed universal rather than American or Western. In his speeches at the Millennium Development Goals summit and the annual opening of the UN General Assembly, President Obama addressed the question at some length.

In fact, the president devoted nearly half of his General Assembly speech to this theme. His presentation of the case took 19 paragraphs mainly because he approached it from so many different angles and in so many aspects. And that panoply itself underscored a key point: that progress is achieved, and measured, in many ways.

As I said last year, each country will pursue a path rooted in the culture of its people. Yet experience shows us that history is on the side of liberty - that the strongest foundation for human progress lies in open economies, open societies, and open governments. To put it simply: democracy, more than any other form of government, delivers for our citizens.

The speech emphasized the connections between economic and social rights and civil and political rights -- which have often been counterposed against each other. The common thread is the impact on ordinary people and the need to both empower them politically and ensure decent living standards and rewards for hard work. Woven into the argument were the issues of access to markets (e.g. for African food exports), the bureaucracy and corruption that stifles enterprise, the need to let women and girls play full roles, the freedom to protest and use the internet without censorship, and the will of the people as the only true source of political authority.

So long, Democracy Arsenal Posted by Patrick Barry

You may have noticed that my Democracy Arsenal posting has declined a bit since I first began writing here almost three years ago. While largely attributable to increased responsibilities at DA's mamma, the National Security Network, as well as a budding interest in other mediums (especially Twitter - follow me at @Pbarry122), I've also been under consideration for a position with the government. Well, the time has come. On Monday I will start my new job as Special Assistant to my old boss, Rand Beers, who is Undersecretary for the National Protection and Programs Directorate at DHS. I couldn't be more excited about this opportunity, but it will mean I have to stop blogging for a while.

Of all my experiences working at NSN, writing for DA has been far and away the most enjoyable. Besides having the opportunity to develop my thinking on foreign policy in public - something not all young people get a chance to do - I've been exposed to criticism that has forced me to revisit assumptions again and again. It's been a great run, and I will miss blogging dearly, but I'll be back soon enough.

How the Military Boxed Obama in on Afghanistan Posted by Michael Cohen

So I haven't had a chance to read Bob Woodward's latest leak-filled tome, but from my understanding this graf seems to sum up one of the book's key themes:

The detailed meeting-by-meeting account, titled "Obama's Wars," describes how the top military and civilian officials in the Pentagon essentially barred serious consideration of any course of action that involved deploying fewer than the 30,000 additional troops that Obama eventually approved. Despite the critiques from Lute, Jones and Eikenberry, the only options that were seriously considered in the White House involved 30,000 to 40,000 more troops.

This is a bit of confirmation of what some of us were writing last Fall: that the Pentagon was actively working NOT to give the President a host of military options for what to do in Afghanistan, but to narrow his options to that he had little choice but to support escalation and a COIN strategy. Knowing this now it provides some more context for the leak of McChrystal's strategic review last Fall and more important his comments in London disparaging Vice President Biden's support for a CT approach for Afghanistan: both were consistent with a concerted and orchestrated effort by the military to force the President's hand on Afghanistan policy. This was something by the way that was happening throughout the spring and summer of 2009 so that by the time the White House convened its strategic review, COIN-focused escalation was pretty much the only option on the table.

This takeaway from the Daily Beast is one of my favorite tidbits:

In addition to being master bureaucratic infighters, the generals are genius P.R. men. Woodward recounts scene after scene of Petraeus talking to the press when he’s specifically been ordered to stand down. Once, just before a Situation Room meeting with Obama, he made a surprise CNN appearance from the White House briefing room.

What I Saw (and didn't see) as an Afghan Election Observer Posted by Michael Cohen

In my column this week for AOLNews I write about what I saw as an election observer for the recent Afghan presidential elections: 

We arrived at the polling center in the northern Afghan province of Samengan via a road that winded its way around simple mud-brick houses, over narrow bridges of indeterminate effectiveness and on a surface so deeply pockmarked and uneven it barely qualified as a road.

I was in Afghanistan with the nongovernmental organization Democracy International, as part of an 80-person international election observer team.

All across Afghanistan, ordinary citizens headed to the polls on Saturday to cast a ballot for representatives to the country's Wolesi Jirga, or parliament, and in this tiny, rural village -- untouched by modernity -- it seemed that almost the entire community had gathered at the school/polling center to take in the proceedings. On one side were the village's male population; on the other were the women clad head to toe in full-length blue burqas. Meanwhile, children stared in wonder at our four-vehicle convoy and Kalashnikov-toting South African private security guards.

Clad in body armor and identification denoting us as international election observers, we marched to the village polling station to begin our monitoring. The polling center manager greeted us -- as did, it seemed, many of the idling men of the community -- deeply curious as to what exactly we were doing in their village. Our translator Sayed explained to the manager that we were here to observe the election process. He seemed momentarily confused but quickly ushered us inside the male voting station (our female colleagues were taken to the women's polling station).

Resilience is Leadership Posted by James Lamond



There has been a lot of undo fuss over an excerpt in the Bob Woodward’s new book that quotes President Obama during a discussion about terrorism.  Apparently the president believes that the American people are a strong and resilient people.  In an interview with Woodward, he said: "We can absorb a terrorist attack. We'll do everything we can to prevent it, but even a 9/11, even the biggest attack ever . . . we absorbed it and we are stronger."

For some reason the right has gone nuts over this.  To me it seems like a perfectly logical –and true – statement.  I am not sure exactly what the criticism is.  Do they think that the American people are not able to “absorb” an attack, that we are a weak and fragile country?  Should we instead cower in fear? Disrupt our entire way of life? Seems that we are stronger than that.

First let’s be clear. Terrorism experts saythat the recent efforts have put al Qaeda central under a great deal of pressure and reduced its capabilities to conduct large scale attacks.  Earlier this year Richard Clarke wrote, “It is an objective and undeniable fact that U.S. counterterrorism efforts have reduced the overall threat from what it was a few years ago.” More recently Peter Bergen described the threat faced by terrorism as “real but not catastrophic.”  And part of a comprehensive approach to combating terrorism is preparing the readiness and the resilience of a nation. 

The common criticism regarding this quote that has been coming from people like Gretchen Carlson is that it invites an attack.  How exactly? If terrorists don’t achieve what they want – fear, overreaction and disruption from the target population – then why exactly would that encourage an attack? In fact it’s the opposite that’s true.  As Stephen Flynn, an expert on homeland security and President of the Center for National Policy, testified last week before the House Armed Services Committee: “If how we react—or more precisely, when we overreact—elevates the appeal of carrying out these attacks on U.S. soil, it follows that there is an element of deterrence by denying these terrorist groups the return on investment they hope to receive.”

Stephen Walt Drags Me Back In - More on ASG Posted by Michael Cohen

So at some point I'd like to stop writing about the Afghanistan Study Group and actually talk a bit more about the US war in Afghanistan, but Stephen Walt has dragged me back in. 

I should say at the outset that I am generally a big fan of Steve Walt and his writings (with one notable exception) - and in general I think US foreign policy would be on a better track if more people listened to his prescriptions for it. That's why I am particularly disappointed by his critique of my critique of the ASG report. I quote in full below:

Michael Cohen at democracyarsenal.org offers a more sympathetic critique, and says he's mostly disappointed that the Study Group didn't offer more detailed, actionable recommendations. He also chides us for making arguments that he (and others) were making a year ago. He's correct that we didn't lay out detailed "action plans" for implementing our various recommendations, but that's also largely beside the point. Until the national leadership is convinced that the present course is a non-starter, there is little point in offering detailed action plans for implementing a different course. The Group also sought to produce a report that key staffers and politicians would actually read, unlike some of the doorstop reports that think tanks often offer. And at least one reader welcomed this feature. Cohen is also correct that the Group was neither alone nor the first to identify the problems with current U.S. strategy, but so what? The question is whether one can get the relevant decision makers to finally pay attention.

I'm not sure if this was Walt's intention, but this analysis makes it sound like I am just bitter that more people weren't listening to me last summer when I was writing the Afghanistan Mission Creep Watch. I dare anyone to read what I wrote here and draw Walt's 'sour grapes' conclusion. 

The Military and Succession in Egypt Posted by Michael Wahid Hanna

Thanassis Cambanis had a very interesting story over the weekend in the New York Times (in which I am quoted) on the Egyptian military and the looming issue of presidential succession (yes, I know, it has been looming for some time now). The story describes the stakes for the military in the succession process and discusses how the military might fit into various post-Hosni Mubarak succession scenarios.

In the piece, Issandr el-Amrani, a sharp observer of Egyptian politics, states that “[t]he military is seen as the only institution that is able to block succession in Egypt.” But gaming out what the military would and, as importantly, could actually do is difficult. It is not at all clear that they could in fact block a succession scenario, specifically, a scenario that involved the ascension of Gamal Mubarak. In the story I argue that “[i]t’s an open question how much power the military has, and they might not even know themselves.”

The role of the military in Egyptian society has changed dramatically since the days of the Free Officers movement and Gamal ‘Abd al-Nasser. The thing to remember is that Egypt’s military has not been involved directly in political affairs in years. The last high profile military man, Field Marshall ‘Abd al-Halim Abu Ghazaleh, was removed from his post as Defense Minister in 1989, in a move that was seen as a preemptive action against a potential political rival.

Furthermore, the military role in governance is diminished. In 1966, Sid’qi Suleiman led a government filled with active-duty military officers. These serving military men held key portfolios and occupied half the cabinet-level positions. As such, in 1968, the leftist historian Anouar Abdel-Malek could confidently describe Nasser’s Egypt as a military society. The current cabinet of 33 formal ministers includes only one active-duty military officer, Field Marshall Mohammed Hussein Tantawi, the minister of defense (Lt. Gen. ‘Omar Suleiman, often seen as a potential presidential successor, is a minister without portfolio).

A Bit More on that Afghanistan Study Group Report Posted by Michael Cohen

Over the next few days I'm going to be writing a bit about the situation in Afghanistan, which based on a set of recent interviews and discussions seems increasingly dire and immune to good alternatives.

But the recent, rather heated debate, about the Afghanistan Study Group report merits further discussion. Josh Foust, in indomitable Foustian style, unleashed a 3,600 word howitzer-style attack on the group, which led to heated responses from ASG signatories, Bernard Finel and Justin Logan.

Finel pungently criticized both me and Foust for engaging in a "circular firing squad" by attacking individuals who basically share the same goal as we do - namely, de-escalate the US presence in Afghanistan. It's a fair critique, but I would simply note to Bernard that while I've been critical of the ASG report I did also say that it would be helpful if ASG folks " flesh (ed) out the complexities of what a real Plan B strategy for Afghanistan looks like."  (And the notion that we should ignore the all too evident flaws in this report simply because we share basic aims seems non-conducive to smart foreign policy analysis).

Indeed, this is where much of the criticism from the report comes from - a frustration that after ten months of work the ASG has come with a report that offers a series of non-actionable, unrealistic recommendations that will be of little assistance to policymakers. Maybe ASG can be effective going forward (and I hope they will be) but frankly I can't help but wonder what they have been doing for the past year.

Yet both Finel and Logan; as well as to a lesser extent Steve Clemons have sort of tried to change the debate - arguing instead that the report is important not for it's recommendations, but because it demonstrates the failure of current US strategy and will spark a debate about Afghanistan policy.

What the United Nations Should, and Shouldn't, Worry About Posted by David Shorr

From Colum Lynch's Turtle Bay Blog over at Foreign Policy, we have a fascinating report of a recent retreat of top UN officials at which they took stock of the global agenda and the world body's relation to it. From Lynch's reading of the leaked working papers from the meeting (available at FoxNews.com) and additional background in his post, it was quite a hand-wringing affair. In a couple areas, retreat participants had plenty of cause for worry. In terms of the sensitivities that Colum highlights, keeping the organization in a central role, they're setting themselves up.

To the extent that the UN retreat documents highlight the dire consequences of persistent multilateral dysfunction, the warning is perfectly apt, though the problem should hardly be laid at the feet of the UN. To the extent that the retreat tried to use these pressures to shake the organization out of its torpor and hide-bound ways, that is also to the good. But when the UN's standard and self-expectation is to be at the heart of the multilateral action no matter what the issue, this is self-defeating and represents a misreading of the international system.

It's also why I've always hated the idea of a competitive multilateral marketplace of inter-governmental organizations. It's not as if all IGOs supply the same commodity of multilateral cooperation. Different forums are distinctive in their composition, mandate, authority, and level of representation (along a political-to-technical spectrum). Division of labor, rather than competition, is the name of the game. The UN should be asking whether it is making the maximum contribution on the basis of what it's set up to do, not whether it's doing everything. With such a biodiversity in the multilateral ecosystem, aspiring to pre-eminence only sets the UN up for a fall.

Muslims, Quran Burnings, and the Problem of Freedom of Speech Posted by Shadi Hamid

It’s good that Pastor Terry Jones is considering backing down from his plan to burn 200 Qurans. Obama and Petraeus, correctly, anticipated that such an act would have dire repercussions and provoke anti-American activity throughout the world (it already has). We saw what happened with the Danish cartoon controversy and drawing a bunch of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad is considerably more mild than burning the book that Muslims consider the literal, exact word of God.

But herein lies a problem. I remember getting into a conversation with a relative – an American citizen – about the Danish cartoons. He suggested that there should be some sort of international ban, enforced by the UN (I’m not sure how), on offensive depictions of religious figures. When I heard this, I thought to myself, “you’re sort of missing the point here.” Meanwhile, Muqtedar Khan, a professor of Islamic studies at the University of Delaware, is regarded as one of the more progressive – I’ve imposed a moratorium on using the word “moderate” without quotation marks – American Muslim voices. But he has written a bizarre and, quite frankly, frightening article about the Quran burnings (via Isaac Chotiner). For example:

The act will scorch Muslim hearts everywhere. The searing pain will never be forgotten...Believe me, there is nothing more precious to Muslims than the Quran, and watching people toss it into fire, will be horrifying. I would rather burn in fire myself, than watch a Quran burn.

I have to admit – the first time I heard about Pastor Jones’s Quran burning scheme, it disturbed me a bit, but in the same way that a Sarah Palin speech disturbs me – it bothers me, makes me fear for my country, but, after 10 minutes, you sort of shrug it off. In contrast, when I first heard about the Danish cartoons a couple years back, I literally didn’t care and had trouble understanding how people could get so worked up about it.

Who Are You Calling "Pollyana"? Posted by David Shorr

 

The importance of shared interests is on my top three list of misunderstood elements of the engagement strategy, so I'll take another stab at straightening the record. This time the provocation comes from Daniel Drezner's review of Secretary Clinton's CFR Speech. Drezner lists the following critique among the 'bad' parts of the speech in his tally of the good, the bad and the BS: 

The overestimation of shared interests.  Clinton talked about, "international diplomacy aimed at rallying nations to solve common problems and achieve shared aspirations" as a constant of American foreign policy.  That's great -- but what about the areas where values and aspirations are not shared?  There were far too many Pollyannish paragraphs in this speech.

Contrary to appearances, the stressing of shared interests is not merely a fudging over of divergent interests or empty rhetoric. In fact, the appeal to common interests is based on a strategy for how to overcome differences in an age of growing international interdependence. When countries disagree over an issue, the substance of any solution will be shaped by bargaining, compromise, brinksmanship, etc. This isn't news to anyone.

The more fundamental problem, one that hangs over the entire enterprise of international cooperation, is to induce world leaders to do politically and diplomatically difficult things. From climate change to Middle East peace to balanced economic growth, the immediate benefits of the deal on the negotiating table won't be enough to make it attractive. For most of the issues on the international agenda, progress hinges on a widespread awareness of needing to tackle a problem despite its intractability and the surrounding swirl of differing interests. As I said in a longer post on the same subject, it's not hard to think of an anaology in day-to-day life. When we talk about individuals needing to make wise choices, we say it's in their "own best interests," which parallels this approach to foreign policy pretty closely.

What do we do about actors that are more fundamentally at cross-purposes? The answer is similar. When it comes to renegades or defectors, you want the broadest, strongest possible international coalition helping reinforce the price of ostracism. Sometimes I describe this strategy in terms of the social contract and the analogy with local communities. We're trying to strengthen the law-abiding majority in the community of nations.

The Definitive Take on the State Secrets Ruling Posted by Jacob Stokes

The New Yorker's Jane Mayer, who's been dogged on this issue, has the definitive take on yesterday's Ninth Circuit Federal Court of Appeals ruling that people who claim to be victims of rendition won't be heard in court:

But equally disturbing is the message that this verdict sends to individual American citizens, like the former Jeppesen employee, who felt a call to conscience that made him speak out, even at the risk to his own future employment, because he believed that secret kidnapping and torture were crimes in a country founded on the idea that all people, not just Americans, have inalienable rights, including protection from cruel and inhumane punishment. That his allegations could receive a public hearing in the press, but not a legitimate hearing in the American system of justice—even under an Administration headed by a former professor of constitutional law—is a daunting reflection of the clout wielded by the national-security bureaucracy in Washington, in the age of the Long War.